Public Employee Press

Bush policies hurt New York

By JACK NEWFIELD

Wherever you look, George Bush’s policies have damaged New York City. His twisted priorities have shortchanged the city whose pain he will further exploit as a prop for his renomination in August. Bush has no urban policy. He wants to go to Mars, but not to the Bronx. He will spend $87 billion to rebuild Iraq, but not a penny to build affordable housing or improve education in New York.

Let’s look at education, homeland security, and Medicare — to better understand how unfairly our city gets treated, compared to other sections of the nation. The president’s over-hyped No Child Left Behind Act has turned out to be a hoax. It is about managing perceptions, not changing reality.

Bush has refused to put $8 billion that Congress authorized for this law into the budget. This has deprived our children of $1.2 billion in federal education dollars in 2003 and 2004.

By hoarding this authorized money, Bush has cost New York $657 million in promised Title I funding for impoverished pupils and low-performing schools. About 900 of the city’s 1,200 public schools are eligible for Title I funds. The full $1.2 billion could have helped New York City cut class size, raise salaries and improve conditions in Title I schools.

Now the Bush administration is insisting on higher standards and tougher tests for students who have been denied adequate resources. This dirty trick sets up poor kids to fail.

On homeland security, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly testified before Congress in November that New York has gotten only $60 million of $232 million promised to help us combat terrorism.

Rural Wyoming gets $38 per person for anti-terrorism preparations, and we get $5 per person, according to the NYPD, even though the biggest threats in Wyoming are cattle rustling and felonious sheep shearing and we lost 2,800 lives and 100,000 jobs in the mass murder of 9/11.

The funding formulas set by the Republicans are based not on population density or threat levels but on pork barrel politics. And the Republican convention here in August will make New York an even bigger target for terrorists — while Bush denies us the funds to prepare properly for this higher threat level.

The Medicare bill Bush signed in December hurts New York hospitals with funding formulas that favor rural areas. Texas — home of Bush and the House Republican majority leader Tom DeLay — got a windfall of $1.1 billion.

New York, with the most distressed hospitals in the country and the biggest concentration of poor people’s hospitals, got only about $80 million.

Remember: New Yorkers send $16 billion more in taxes to Washington than we get back in federal aid. The late Sen. Daniel Moynihan first exposed this imbalance, which puts a crushing economic burden on the people of New York City.

The Bush administration and Tom DeLay have used us and abused us. And by staging their convention here, they are sticking their finger in our eye after picking our pockets.